Politics|Pennsylvania Democrats Wonder How Far Is Too Far Left in 2020

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Pennsylvania Democrats Wonder How Far Is Too Far Left in 2020

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Supporters of Representative Conor Lamb at his midterm election watch party in November. Mr. Lamb flipped many precincts that had voted for President Trump in 2016.CreditCreditFederica Valabrega/Reuters

But, listening to strategists and voters in a critical state for Democrats, the midterms feel like a long time ago. Instead, there are widespread worries that the momentum in Pennsylvania, and in other key Rust Belt states, could screech to a halt if the issues in the 2020 presidential primaries and the party’s eventual nominee stray too far left for the region’s many centrist voters.

“The more we have presidential candidates or newly elected congresspeople talking about the Green New Deal, talking about ‘Medicare for all,’ talking about socialism, the more that plays into the Trump campaign’s hands,” said Ed Rendell, a former Pennsylvania governor and national Democratic chairman.

He mentioned issues that are tantalizing to some primary voters and candidates but which risk alienating general election voters, such as reparations for descendants of slaves and a rapid, costly transition to carbon-free energy. “Reparations? What are we talking about?” Mr. Rendell scoffed. “Having only renewable energy by 2030? It’s not possible to achieve that.”

Mr. Trump is in the White House in large part because of the crumbling in 2016 of three so-called blue-wall states, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, which had not voted for a Republican presidential candidate in more than two decades.

In 2020, if the rest of the electoral map is unchanged, with Mr. Trump winning the swing states of Florida and Ohio, Democrats understand that their most promising path back to the presidency is to resurrect the blue wall. Mr. Trump carried the three states by less than 80,000 total votes, so small fluctuations in his support or opposition would be pivotal.

Christopher Borick, a political scientist and pollster at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, called 2016 a “lightning-in-a-bottle” victory that will be hard for the president to duplicate.

But, he said, Democrats are in danger of creating the conditions in which it could happen.

“A more left-leaning candidate opens the door for Trump,” Mr. Borick said. “If you want to lock up Pennsylvania for a Democrat, the more moderate Democrats are the key.”

Some Democratic strategists said it is much too early to rule out any of the 2020 hopefuls as unable to defeat Mr. Trump in Pennsylvania, where disapproval of his job performance is 54 percent, with 42 percent approval, according to Gallup.

“I’m not going to sit here and say there’s a Democratic nominee that can’t win Pennsylvania,” said Jason O’Malley, a party strategist in Lancaster County, a Republican-leaning region.

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Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a native of Scranton, is viewed as a candidate who could win back Pennsylvania for the Democrats if he runs for president in 2020.CreditGene J. Puskar/Associated Press

Coleman Lamb, a senior adviser to his brother Conor, said a candidate’s personal qualities mattered more to voters than ideology. “I don’t think the only way to win is someone who proactively goes to the middle,” he said. “I think it’s more someone who is authentic, who’s saying what they actually believe and think.”

In 2018, Conor Lamb flipped many precincts that had voted for Mr. Trump, especially in the North Hills suburbs of Pittsburgh. Recent interviews with two dozen voters there, a mix of blue- and white-collar workers, revealed the full Democratic spectrum, from progressives eager for a nominee who leans hard left, to party apostates who voted for Mr. Trump and remain solidly behind him.

Nick DiCaprio, a retired postal worker, illustrated the challenges facing Democrats. A longtime Democrat, he voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 but returned to the party in the midterms when he helped elect Mr. Lamb, a former Marine and prosecutor, who vowed to oppose Nancy Pelosi for House speaker.

Mr. DiCaprio’s 2020 vote is up for grabs. Asked which Democrat might win back Pennsylvania, he said “probably Kamala,” referring to Kamala Harris, the California senator and former attorney general. There was one Democratic hopeful he was sure he would not vote for: Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. “He wants to take everything off the rich and give it to the poor: That’s communism,” Mr. DiCaprio said.

It is probably no coincidence that most of the Pennsylvania Democrats who won Republican-held congressional seats last year were moderates who had defeated progressives in primary contests. The one progressive who made it to the general election in a competitive district, Scott Wallace, lost to the Republican, Brian Fitzpatrick, in Bucks County, which Hillary Clinton carried.

Leading Democratic and Republican strategists in Pennsylvania said the most likely nominees to carry the state, at this early stage, appeared to be former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a native of Scranton, and Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, both of whose centrist policies fit comfortably with the state’s voters.

Both are “a Yuengling order for a Pennsylvanian right now,” said Ryan Costello, a former Republican congressman from suburban Philadelphia. That is, someone as familiar as the beer brewed in Pottsville.

Mr. Costello said that by nominating a progressive in 2020 — he named Mr. Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — the general election would become a referendum on far-left policies rather than the president. “The whiplash on the left right now, it’s almost like they didn’t learn the lesson of why they were successful in 2018,” Mr. Costello said.

Ms. Klobuchar has said she is no “magic genie” who can provide free college, and she prefers improving the Affordable Care Act rather than rolling out Medicare for all. She is Mr. Rendell’s top choice. “Amy is the only Democrat who did well during the Kavanaugh hearings,” he said.

Mr. Biden, known as Pennsylvania’s “third senator” in his decades representing Delaware, is seen as able to win back white blue-collar voters who defected to Mr. Trump across the Rust Belt.

But some Democrats quietly hope Mr. Biden does not run, fearing that his age — he is 76, four years older than Mr. Trump — puts him at a disadvantage, as does political baggage he carries from an earlier era.

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Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who is running for president, has centrist policies that fit comfortably with Pennsylvania voters.CreditElizabeth Frantz for The New York Times

“I love Joe, but I think that with the new era, and the MeToo and all that, Joe has some skeletons in his closet,” said Jane Lyons, 63, a hospital administrative assistant in suburban Pittsburgh. “There are people coming up under me that won’t tolerate it.”

As the president’s former lawyer Michael D. Cohen on Wednesday called Mr. Trump a racist, a cheat and a con man in House testimony, the solidity of the president’s base was on display here, especially the resentments of white working-class voters who turned out in droves for him in 2016.

“We had eight years of nothing,” said Diane Pappert, 75, a retired school guard, referring to President Barack Obama, “and this guy’s trying to clean up everybody’s mess.”

Her daughter Angie Hughes, 55, a nurse, had cast the first vote of her life for Mr. Trump. She said she would never vote for a Democrat because she believed that the party favored generous welfare benefits. “When you see people who have three, four, five children to different fathers, they have no plans of ever going to work,” she said.

Lou Iezzi, 68, who still works at an auto garage he opened at 19, had voted Democratic for decades before casting a ballot for Mr. Trump. He liked the way he sounded as if he were on the next barstool, and Mr. Iezzi chuckled approvingly recalling Mr. Trump’s dismissive remarks about the newscaster Megyn Kelly in 2015 that were widely interpreted as referring to menstruation.

Mr. Iezzi could vote for a Democrat in 2020 if the nominee “sounds like he’s talking honestly,” he said. His choice of the male pronoun was deliberate: “I just can’t see a woman running this country.”

Rob Kopler, a retired deputy sheriff, who agrees with the president on a border wall, voted for him in 2016, but in the midterms he supported Mr. Lamb and Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat.

He is doubtful any of the 2020 Democratic hopefuls will win him over. “The Democrat party let their people down,” he said. “They were going so far into the different extremes they forgot about who put them in office: the middle-class white male.”

There were Democrats who had no problem with expansive government programs like Medicare for all or free public college. “Bernie would be a very good choice,” said Fran Balsomico, 66, who retired last year after three decades as an elementary school teacher.

But others said someone would have to pay for such programs, and the most likely someones were suburbanites like themselves.

Joe Carnevale, 59, an IT director at a public utility, is an independent who leans Democratic. He voted for Mrs. Clinton. “How do we get them back?” he asked of the Trump voters who were once loyal Democrats.

“Someone’s got to take the Democrats into the real world,” Mr. Carnevale said. “Liberalism is good. There’s nothing wrong with that. But there has to be a middle there. We do have a working class.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: In Pennsylvania, Skewing Left May Sap Momentum of 2018. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe